The subject matter disclosed herein relates to imaging and, in particular, integrated microscope objectives.
Spherical aberration occurs in lenses because light is refracted differently near the edge of a lens relative to how it is refracted at its center. The contrast and sharpness of an image captured with a high numerical aperture microscope objective is dependent on how well corrected the spherical aberration of the system is. However, the format of a sample being imaged by a microscope may also change the total spherical aberration observed in the image. For example, the sample may be mounted on substrates that are available in a variety of thicknesses. Further, the substrate thickness will depend on if the sample is placed with the slide or the coverslip facing the objective or, alternatively, if the sample is positioned on a thick plastic bottom of the well plate. Accordingly, additional spherical aberration may be introduced via the sample and its particular substrate, and sample-dependent spherical aberration may be difficult to compensate for in microscopes that are calibrated for only certain sample substrate types and/or thicknesses.